Skipped Generations of Genesis

Faith & Science Conversation
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Are there skipped generations in Genesis that can account for all the long ages of the patriarchs? If so, how many and what is the significance of pointing this out? Lets take a look!

  • Luk 3:38 …Adam, which was the son of God.

Adam is called the son of God. Could this just mean that there was no record keeping of anyone that lived before Adam? He may have been a nomad living a hunter gatherer life style, and learned in the garden (the fertile crescent) that he can take fruit from a tree (a fig tree perhaps) and plant it in the ground.

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The flesh looks a little like a tree canopy and the seeds like the fruit on the tree. Oh, it even has a trunk at the bottom… an aha moment for sure! So tasty to!! Hmm… what if I plant this in the ground? …I’ll bet Adam didn’t even notice the grapevine growing upon that tree in the midst of the garden of God.

He can till the ground and make a row of them, but the downside was that it brought forth thorns and thistles. …So we have a story of a hunter gatherer going to a life style of farming and animal husbandry. Settling down and taking possession of land invites conflict for sure… that’s one short of the long of it.

Sin and death entered the world through Adam, or perhaps its through Adam’s generations:

Generations of Adam Lifespan Begat
Adam 930 130
Seth 912 105
Enosh 905 90
Kenin 910 70
Mahalalel 895 65
Jared 962 162
Enoch 365 65
Methuselah 969 187
Lamech 777 182
Noah 950 502
Sum of Ages 8,575 1,558
Number of Generations Avg Lifespan Avg Age Begat
120 71 13

Could it be that one person on this list can represent multiple people? We can find support from this in this verse on Noah’s generations:

  • Gen 6:9 These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.

- Generations (1755. דּוֹר dor) means: a revolution of time, an age, generation, a dwelling

In the list of the generations of Adam, if we add up the total of all their ages and when they begat children, then divide that total by 120 individuals (instead of 10), we end up with an average lifespan of 71 years and an average age of 13 for when they began having children… I mean, there were no laws for turning 18 first back then.

The meaning of the number 120 in Hebrew is ‘age of flesh’.

  • Gen 6:3 And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

Noah, being perfect in his generations, brings an end to this ‘age of flesh’, and a flood begins. We are made perfect through Jesus. He saves us from our flood… our baptism of full submersion and then are brought back up to newness of life.

Now lets take a look at the second list of 10 generations, the generations of Shem:

Generations of Shem Lifespan Begat
Shem 600 100
Arphaxad 438 35
Shelah 433 30
Eber 464 34
Peleg 239 30
Reu 239 32
Serug 230 30
Nahor 148 29
Terah 205 70
Abraham 175 100
Sum of Ages 3,171 490
Number of Generations Avg Lifespan Avg Age Begat
40 79 12

In the list of the generations of Shem, if we add up the total of all their ages and when they begat children, then divide that total by 40 individuals (instead of 10), we end up with an average lifespan of 79 years and an average age of 12 for when they began having children… Oh man, kids having kids again, and even younger.

The meaning of the number 40 in Hebrew is ‘testing’, so we have an ‘age of the flesh’ followed by and ‘age of testing’. Abraham’s faith saved him, bringing an end to the age of testing.

  • Rom 4:3 For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.

Whats next? Well if we add 120 and 40 together we get 160. This number 160 means ‘heart’ or ‘love’. Have you found the heart of God?.. where there is an ‘age of love’?

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Along with the skipped generations of Noah, Noah’s flood could represent multiple floods in the area of Mesopotamia. This article identifies major floods including 3500 BC, 3000 BC, 2950 BC, 2900 BC, 2850 BC, and 2600 BC

If 12 or 13 seems too young for boys to start having children:

The minimum legal age for betrothal of a boy was 10 years of age.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/apa.16781#apa16781-sec-0008-title

  • Gen 6:1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, 2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.

Here the ‘sons of God’ are Adam and his generations (Semitic). Daughters of men are of other people (Sumerians) that were not part of the line of Adam. From the same source:

The earliest civilization of ancient Mesopotamia was that of the Sumerians, a mysterious people of unknown ethnic origin, who flourished in Southern Mesopotamia during the third millennium BC. In the second millennium BC, Semitic populations came to dominate the entire Mesopotamian area.

  • 4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

Those days before and also after the flood of Noah. So the same thing happened with the generations of Shem.

Also giants does not have to mean tall in stature: giants (5303. נְפִיל Nephilim) a feller, a bully, tyrant

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Any ideas on how the Nephilim survived the flood?

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Fantasy stories seem to survive all types of disaster. It is great fun to imagine people among us who are half human and half angel like in the book and film “Fallen” of 2016. But is this consistent with the Bible? No it is not. Great entertainment and fantasy is not good theology.

Indeed. And thus the idea that Genesis 6 is referring to the people spoken of in Numbers 13 is ludicrous. Genesis 6 is speaking of men of renown - leaders in the beginning of human civilization who brought to others the ideas (possibly including love, God, spirit, persons, good and evil, and justice) taught by God to Adam and Eve.

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Whether it was one flood or over the course of multiple floods, the Nephilim were destroyed from the land by the flood. After the flood, Semitic people (children of Adam) came to dominate the entire Mesopotamian region as the online library source says.

The Nephilim reappear after the flood not because they survived it but because the sons of God (Adam’s descendants) did the same thing they did before it:

  • Gen 6:4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

This likely began with Ham’s sin and the cursing of his son Canaan.

  • Gen 9:24 And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. 25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.

In Numbers 13 they were likely descendants of Canaan as they were living in the land of Canaan. Other names for them (may or may not be related) are Anakim and Rephaim.

No I don’t think they brought the ideas taught by God. They had their own pagan customs, traditions and were highly influential to the Hebrews, especially by intermarrying with them. That’s why God sent the flood to remove them.

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That interpretation was invented by Augustine in order to block what the Manicheans did with that text; “sons of elohim” is a Hebraism that means “those who belong to the category elohim”, and that category is spiritual beings, specifically non-embodied beings. Augustine’s is a strained and unjustified interpretation that can only work based on the Latin and be inserted into the Greek. It is particularly problematic given the the Adversary in Job is included in the “sons of elohim” and later they are indicated as having been present at Creation. This interpretation finds no actual support either in ancient Hebrew or other ANE usage.

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for once i have found a post of yours Mitchel in which we completely agree. Im delighted about that!

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I have a different perspective on this. Rather than cite my own words, ive got a reference from another source:

In Genesis, a principle that surfaces early is that a created kind only reproduces after its own kind. This physical law means that one class of creature can mate and reproduce among its own class: Cats can only mate with other cats and produce kittens; dogs can only mate with other dogs and produce puppies—but cats and dogs cannot produce a strange hybrid of their very different species. This principle is established scientific fact.

That humans are fleshly, physical beings is evident in Genesis 2. In Genesis 2:7, Moses writes, “The LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground.” Later, when God formed Eve out of Adam’s rib (verse 21), Adam exclaimed about her, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” The carnality or fleshiness of humanity is made countless times throughout Scripture.

Yet, Psalm 104:4 confirms that God “makes His angels spirits, His ministers a flame of fire,” and Hebrews 1:14 confirms this fact: “Are [angels] not all ministering spirits . . .?” (emphasis ours throughout). Since human beings are composed of flesh and angels of spirit, they cannot be of the same kind. Angels cannot impregnate mortal women and produce anything. It is not possible for two distinct kinds to mate and reproduce.
What the Bible says about Angels Cannot Reproduce

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I don’t believe angels or spiritual beings are ‘sons of God’, because they are not born (at least not yet) but created. They are preincarnate beings. All angels are created except for the “Angel of the Lord” which is the preincarnate Christ. Jesus is not called the Son of God in the OT, but shall be called a Son after He is born.

  • 2 Sam 7:12 And when thy days be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build an house for my name, and I will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever. 14 I will be his father, and he shall be my son. If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men: 15 But my mercy shall not depart away from him,

You might say that this is prophetically talking about Solomon as the son of David, but really it is only fulfilled in Jesus. He came down out of heaven, taking on our flesh nature, He took our sins, our iniquity upon himself and was bruised, whipped and hung on the cross to save us. He rose again and established His Kingdom.

The adversary, Satan, was born as the serpent, made along with other beasts. He was a preincarnate angel, present at creation along with all other created spiritual beings… created in the beginning.

  • Job 38:4 “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
    Tell Me, if you have understanding.

Satan loses his right to be called a son of God. It is only through receiving Jesus that anyone is given the right to be called children (a son) of God.

  • John 1:12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: 13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

My position is that the ‘sons of God’ and the ‘daughters of men’ are the same kind. Angels are preincarnate spiritual beings and I would guess that their kind is undetermined until they are born, taking on a flesh nature… and not all would choose to do so.

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What do you mean angels “kind” are undetermined until they are born?

Angels arent born, they are clearly created beings. A big difference there is that Adam and Eve were created to populate the earth…angels were created as ministering spirits to God.

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Angels are spirits and do not have a flesh kind. If you look at a description of a cherub in Ezekiel, they have four faces; human, lion (representing wild animals), eagle (representing birds) and ox (domestic animals). This is of course figurative imagery in Ezekiel’s vision, but shows them to have a ‘dynamic nature’, which I think is described well in the Berean Study Bible commentary:

Each creature had four faces
This phrase introduces the unique and awe-inspiring nature of the cherubim, heavenly beings that serve as attendants to the divine presence. The number four often symbolizes completeness and universality in biblical literature, suggesting that these creatures embody a comprehensive representation of creation. The Hebrew word for “creature” here is “חַיָּה” (chayah), which can also mean “living being,” emphasizing the vitality and dynamic nature of these celestial entities.

Cherub are created spirits that can indwell a body (are born). God breathed the neshamah (נְשָׁמָה 5397: Breath, spirit, soul) into Adam.

  • Gen 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

Another word for breath that can be used interchangeably is ruach (7307. רוּחַ : Spirit, wind, breath):

  • Gen 6:17 And behold, I Myself am bringing floodwaters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die.

Adam and Eve were created to dress and keep the Garden of Eden.

  • Gen 2:15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

- dress (5647. עָבַד abad): To work, serve, labor, worship
- keep (8104. שָׁמַר shamar): To keep, guard, observe, give heed

Adam was doing the work of a ministering (serving) spirit and more specifically that of a cherub who are often tasked with guarding and protecting.

The old serpent, Satan, the ‘king of Tyre’ was also a cherub in the Garden (see Ezekiel 28:11-19).

When they left the garden, two other cherubim were put in their place to guard the way to the Tree of Life.

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are you Jehovahs Witness or influenced by their theology?

What you appear to be claiming is that spirit is Gods active lifeforce and that angels are not unlike the Holy Spirit.

Angels are angels
The Holy Spirit is its own person
Humans are created with the specific ability to procreate (because God commanded Adam and Eve to be fruitfull and multiply)

In the bible the evidences we have illustrate that spirits enterring a person do so because the individual allows that to occur.

I do not think that we have evidence in the bible where angels are commanded to procreate or that they can procreate…if they are spirits and they enter a body, then the spirit is not the one procreating…so im not finding a logical progression there that supports the idea.

A salesman convincing an individual to purchase a product…that salesman is not buying the product and using it themselves. All they are doing in convincing some one else (another individual) to do so by placing thoughts/desires in that individuals head! This is not evidence for the claim you make.

Also,
I take issue with your interpretation of Genesis 6:17

you wrote…[quote=“graft2vine, post:11, topic:53764”]
Another word for breath that can be used interchangeably is ruach (7307. רוּחַ : Spirit, wind, breath):

  • Gen 6:17 And behold, I Myself am bringing floodwaters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die.
    [/quote]

You highlight “breath”…note the verse says “in which there is breath”

It then goes on to explain itself…“everything that is on earth shall die”

This is ALL life on earth…not specifically humans. So the text is not attributable to your claim in that a metaphorical claim may be drawn from it. Moses obvious intenmtiopnm for the text in the way its written, reads and intrinsically explains, is that literally God determined he planned to destroy all life on earth.

Finally, I have to reject the notion that we are spirits. The bible says God created Man and then gave life to that man. We were not first created spirits, then put into a body.

If what you say about spirit/angels were true in that they enter a body when said body is created, then the scripture “the dead know nothing” would be false…because our conscienceness would live on in spiritual form…but that is clearly not what the text claims.

Ecclesiastes 9:5 reads, “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten.”

Now if i extrapolate further from the above…if what you claim were true, then Satan and all his angels must have died in the flood. However, that is clearly not biblical. Very definately Satan and his angels survived the flood…because they are spirits and not human.

Whether or not one wishes to make the claim that they [angels/spirits] therefore dont breathe or have the breath of life in them…thats another topic for discussion. A sticking point for that notion would be the Holy Spirit breathing the breath of life into Adam. Because Genesis 1 clearly states…

2Now the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

The interesting thing about that text is that it is also claiming that the Holy Spirit actively participated in the creation of the earth…yet the New Testament claim from trinitarians is that Christ created the earth. We also have the claim that Jehovah created it (which JW’s believe with strong evidence that this was the Father). The logical conclusion must be all 3 as individuals participated in Creation…which would mean angelic spirit and human are distinct “kinds”…if we could even call a spirit a “kind” (how does one biologically test spirit?)

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But that is not consistent with the rest of the OT usage of the term.

“Born”? Elohim don’t get born, with the one exception of YHWH_Elohim. They can be embodied, i.e. given or taking a material form, but they are never enfleshed/incarnate.
When embodied they can eat, carry swords, even grab people by the hand – those we are told, but what they can do isn’t limited to those.

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Interesting associations, but in the ANE these faces had a known symbolism: human represented thought and wisdom, lion represented courage and strength, eagle represented swiftness and keen sight, ox represented determination and solidity and sometimes (self-) sacrifice.

No – being embodied and being born are two different things. They are not “living beings” in the sense that animals are.

Not related at all.
There are two distinct realms here – n’shamah are not elohim.

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Yes – that idea comes from Greek dualism, not from scripture. We are spirit+body and without a body are incomplete.

Because Paul says so flat out, and so does John for that matter.

The scriptures attribute Creation to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – a critical take-off point for systematic theology.

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That is a bit confused. There is no juxtaposition of spirit and body according to Paul in 1 Cor 15. We are physical body first then a spiritual body. If the body is juxtaposed to anything it is the mind and we may naturally think that with body there is also a mind: first a physical mind and then a spiritual mind. To be sure Paul doesn’t speak of this and it is more a matter of philosophy than theology.

1 Cor 15:43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall[b] also bear the image of the man of heaven.

Yes. Angels are not born but are created beings, while human beings are born – growing from practically nothing (a tiny seed which we cannot even see). And Adam and Eve are the same or they are not even human at all. So when we say they are created by God we mean something very different than the Geppetto’s creation of puppets.

graft2vine is staring to sounding LDS.

נִשְׁמַ֣ת חַיִּ֑ים niš-maṯ ḥay-yîm; breath of life

The same words are used in Genesis 6:17, Genesis 7:15, Genesis 7:22 referring to all living things which breathe. The point being is that there is no basis whatsoever in these words of the text that God is putting anything supernatural into the body in order to create Adam. But nor do I believe we should be taking this literally that God is putting something in a clay figurine which made it alive like a golem of necromancy, because we know from science there is no such thing added to the body to make it alive. Bodies are alive because of what they are and not from anything added to them. So personally I think what is being referred to as the breath of life from God is the literal meaning of the word “inspiration.” And that while God created the body according to the nature of the stuff of which the earth is made, it was by His communication to Adam, His inspiration, by which Adam became more than just a body – but a also a human mind. After all it does not speak of God doing anything like this for all the animals, but sounds like God doing something different with human being which made them different from them.

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Targum Neofiti*, part of the Palestinian Targumim, comments the creation text in Torah by explaining that those creating were God, the word (memra) of God and the glory of God.
I would say that this teaching is quite close to ‘proto-trinitarian’ understanding. This kind of teaching seems to have been present in the area during the time when Jesus and his disciples lived.

*: a targum was an originally spoken translation of the Hebrew Bible that a professional translator would give in the common language of the listeners when that was not Biblical Hebrew. This had become necessary when the common language was Aramaic and Hebrew was used for little more than schooling and worship. The translator frequently expanded his translation with paraphrases, explanations and examples, so it became a kind of sermon.
Targum Neofiti is the largest of the western or Israeli Targumim on the Torah. The language of the Targum Neofiti is known as ‘Palestinian Aramaic’. (explanation taken from Wikipedia).

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It’s what the Hebrew indicates: a “living soul” is a “dirt body” plus spirit from God.

Slightly different topic. In brief, Paul’s “spiritual body” is still a physical body but the “dirt body” no longer dominates as it does with us, dragging down the spirit, rather the spirit dominates, lifting up the “dirt body”.
FWIW, this can be found in second-Temple Judaism in discussions matching Paul’s material in I Corinthians 15 where he talks about what kind of body we will have in the resurrection (some said we would be like the angels, others that we would be like stars, others that we would be just like we are now except never ailing nor dying, others held to some combination of the above).

I had the same thought. OTOH, he also seems to fit a certain strain of Gnosticism, one that held to pre-existence of spirits.

In an advanced Latin course we had an assignment that was a summary of a dispute over where the case of “spirit” was genitive or ablative, i.e. whether the human spirit was merely a “spirit [which came] from God” or a “spirit which belonged to God”. It was based on an argument between some rabbis, the initial text having been lost. One side insisted that humans are already divine, the other that we will only become divine.

There’s another topic that was argued about by rabbis: was it literal dirt, or metaphorical dirt, or “dirt of origin” i.e. the ultimate but not direct source.
The argument I liked was that the description of YHWH-Elohim breathing into Adam matches what was believed to happen in pagan temples as the final step in establishing a new temple: the priests (or king, in some cases) – or, usually, artisans working for them – made an image of the deity and then held a ceremony petitioning the deity to “inhabit” the image and transform it into something bearing the divine presence. From that perspective there is polemic going on, knocking the pagan idea that the image/idol gains life by saying, “YHWH-Elohim’s image really did gain life!”

It sort of compares to the changing of water to wine: God ordinarily changes water to wine via the means of sunshine and grapes and fermentation, but there He did it directly; God ordinarily makes new people via the means of reproduction by other people, but here He did it directly.

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It’s one of several proto-trinitarian understandings that grew from the understanding of “two powers in heaven”, “two Yahwehs”, in the second-Temple period. It explains why the idea of the Trinity came so easily to the church: The Father was ‘obviously’ Yahweh in heaven, Jesus was plainly Yahweh who walked on earth – now not just in human form but actually human!, and thus the Spirit was Yahweh who was the wisdom and glory of God.

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I have been recently reading the book ‘Classic Christianity’, currently about who Jesus is (Jesus is a suitable topic for Christmas-time reading), and skimming over an article titled ‘The gospel of the memra: Jewish binitarianism and the prologue of John’ (by Daniel Boyarin, 2001, in Harvard Theological Review).
These sources reminded well how the believing Jewish and later Christians living during the first century understood who Christ was. The understanding that Jesus is the true Lord, the only Son of God of the nature of the true God, was definitely part of the core beliefs of early Christians, rather than something added to teachings at a later stage of Christianity.

I have not yet read the parts about the Holy Spirit. Waiting those parts curiously as the Holy Spirit and His guidance and acts are so central to our understanding of how God has acted and acts on Earth. That understanding is crucial also when we try to evaluate how to interpret the scriptures that are supposed to be guided by the Holy Spirit - also regarding the ‘skipped generations’.

I have some initial knowledge of how the first Christians understood God but the forgetting mind needs reminding at some intervals. We cannot remember everything but who God is and the crude guidelines of how He has acted and acts among us belongs to the few core teachings that are good to remember.

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